


Cake Wreck

by Pink_Dalek



Category: Endeavour
Genre: And be a good host, Gen, Morse tries to bake, Of course it goes wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:27:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23180923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pink_Dalek/pseuds/Pink_Dalek
Summary: Inspired by Max, Morse attempts to bake a cake. Set during “Pylon” and “Apollo” in the sixth series.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 35





	Cake Wreck

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by the scene in “Pylon” where Strange visits Morse. As he’s leaving, when he says he’ll visit again, Morse jokingly says, “I’ll bake a cake.”

_  
When I entertain, I do it with all the grace of a water buffalo with a migraine_.  
—Erma Bombeck

Morse saw Jim Strange out to where his car was parked beside the tiny country police station. “Let me know next time, and I’ll bake a cake,” he joked.

 _Now that I’d pay to see,_ Strange thought as he drove away.

After Morse had solved both Ann Kirby’s death and the disappearance of Rosie Johnson, Strange put in a transfer for him to Castle Gate CID. Allocating manpower _was_ part of his job, after all, and leaving Morse spinning his wheels was truly a waste of talent. Then he picked up the phone to ring his friend.

“Sergeant Morse.”

A remembered comment crossed his mind. “Start baking, matey.”

“What?”

“I thought I’d stop by for a visit. I seem to recall you promised to bake a cake.” They both chuckled. “See you around six?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Morse grumbled.

 _That’s what you think_ , Strange thought. He wasn’t going to mention the transfer to Morse. The man was a prickly bugger at the best of times, and if he knew he’d been done a favor and felt obligated—it was easier to just keep quiet.

“See you then, matey. I’ll bring a bottle.”

Morse hung up the phone. Suddenly he remembered dropping in on Max, who’d just baked a seed cake, and who’d invited Morse into his garden for shandy made with freshly-squeezed lemonade and a delicious, moist cake fragrant with spices and tasting of caraway.

He didn’t have a garden, or lemons. He did have eggs, butter, sugar, most of a quart of milk, and there was flour in the cupboard. How hard could it be? Someone had left a basic cookbook behind in the kitchen. A quick leaf through it showed most of the recipes required ingredients he not only didn’t have, he didn’t have a clue what they were. Baking powder? Lemon zest? And there was something to do with cream in the instructions. Fortunately he had that for the coffee he’d started drinking.

His mum used to swear pound cake was the easiest thing in the world, so he found that page. It didn’t need the mysterious baking powder, at least.

He didn’t have a cake pan, but a pan was a pan, wasn’t it? He started the oven heating and set to work. _Cream butter and sugar together in a bowl_. How much cream? He supposed enough to make it a sort of paste. He didn’t have an electric mixer, but it probably wasn’t necessary. 

Butter, sugar, cream. Mix and mix and mix. It was weirdly lumpy. Maybe it needed more cream? Finally he had a sort of butter-sugar slurry, so he added in the eggs and kept stirring. Then the flour. It seemed runnier than cake batter should be, so he mixed it some more. At the last minute he thought to throw in a handful of dried currants.

Sick to death of stirring, he dumped it into the pot, put the pot in the oven and set the timer, then wandered off to the sitting room to put on a record while he worked the crossword in that day’s _Oxford Mail._

He was so intent on the crossword that he’d almost forgotten the cake until the aroma floated into the lounge, so he went to clean up baking mess. In the kitchen he noticed an odd chemical sort of smell coming from the oven, but he hadn’t really used it much, and it _was_ ancient.

By the time everything was on the drainboard, the smell was stronger. Morse opened the oven door only to be met with smoke. Looking for the source, he realized that the black plastic handles on the cooking pot were melting and smoking.

“Shit!” He grabbed a dish towel and pulled out the pot, putting it on the stovetop with a thud. At least the cake was just a few minutes shy of the timer going off. He opened the kitchen window and tried fanning the smoke toward it with the dish towel.

Morse let the cake cool for ten minutes, then upended the pot over a dinner plate. Nothing happened. He shook it a bit. A mix of cooked and partially-cooked batter plopped onto the plate. Morse looked into the pot. “Bloody hell.” The center part hadn’t really baked. The outer third or so had, but was stuck to the pot because he’d forgotten to butter it first.

He heard the door to the front office open. “Morse? Matey?”

“Just a minute!” Morse scurried out, closing the kitchen door to hide his failure.

“You’ll never guess who I ran into and brought with me.”

Morse came round the corner. “Miss Thursday.”

“Something smells good. Have you been baking?” Joan asked, smiling.

“Oh, ah—not really.”

“It smells like pound cake,” Strange observed.

“And something burning. Do you need to take it out of the oven?”

“It’s already out,” he confessed. “And it’s not—not really a pound cake.” Not a successful one, anyway.

Joan sailed past him. Spending so much time with Viv Wall was obviously having an effect on her. “What a cute flat, and all to yourself! With such an easy commute to work every morning, I’m jealous. Is this the kitchen?” She opened the door, even as Morse gestured helplessly and Strange watched them. “Oh. Oh, Morse.”

“I tried to bake a cake,” he mumbled, suddenly very interested in the floor.

“I wasn’t serious, matey,” Jim said quietly.

“I know. But I dropped in on DeBryn last week and he’d baked a seed cake, and my mum used to say pound cake was the easiest thing in the world. I was trying to be a halfway-decent host for once—“ Morse trailed off miserably.

Joan was examining the attempted cake. “What are these purple bits?”

“Dried currants. I had some in the cupboard.”

“Why did you use a cooking pot?”

“I don’t have a cake pan. I thought it would work, but the handles melted and nearly caught fire.” Strange bit his lip hard, determined not to laugh. Morse looked utterly woebegone, there was flour in his mussed hair, and a smudge of cake batter on his cheek.

“It seems rather runny.”

“It was the cream.”

“What cream?” Joan asked.

“The recipe didn’t say how much to put in. It just said to mix cream with the butter and sugar.”

Now Joan’s lips were twitching. “What recipe did you use?”

He showed her. “See? _Cream the butter and sugar together in a mixing bowl_. But it didn’t say how much to use, and I think I used too much.” Behind him, Strange made an odd choking noise.

“Oh.” She broke off a bit of the cooked edge of the cake and sampled it. “It would have been quite good, actually.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Strange did the same. “It would have. But you need a cake pan, and to butter it before the batter goes in.”

“I knew about the butter! I just forgot,” Morse grumped.

“And to use less cream,” Joan added, wanting to spare his feelings.

“How much was I supposed to use?”

“Oh, ah—“

“Only a tablespoon or so, matey. Or you can leave it out.”

“Jim’s right,” Joan agreed. “It’s really not necessary.”

“Not with modern butter,” Strange ad-libbed.

“Modern butter?” Morse asked doubtfully.

 _I shouldn’t have said anything,_ Strange realized. “Look, you put the kettle on, and Joan and I will go into the lounge. I brought some scotch.”

*****

The next time Morse saw Dr. DeBryn, he asked for the pathologist’s seed cake recipe. “And note how much cream to put in. Don’t just write _cream butter and sugar_ and expect me to guess.”

Max tilted his head, confused. “Seed cake doesn’t use cream.”

“That’s good. I ruined a pound cake because the recipe didn’t say how much cream to use.”

“Pound cake doesn’t take cream, either.”

“Because of modern butter?”

 _Modern butter?_ “I use Irish butter for baking.”

“Oh. So if you use Irish butter, you don’t need to add cream.”

“Cake batter doesn’t take cream, unless it’s a recipe that calls for sour cream. Which isn’t cream you’ve left sitting out,” Max added hastily. As brilliant as Morse was, apparently cooking was his Achilles heel. _No wonder he’s thin as a rail._

*****

“What’s that you’ve got there?” Ronnie Box asked. He’d gotten a tea and a bag of crisps from the break room vending machines, and noticed Morse intently reading a 3x5 card at one of the tables, his own cup of tea cooling at his elbow.

“Dr. DeBryn gave me his seed cake recipe.”

“Oh, you ladies have a recipe club going now?”

Morse was so intent he barely noticed the dig. “He told me there wasn’t any cream in this recipe! But right here, he’s written: _cream butter and sugar together in large mixing bowl_.” He held out the card, and Box obligingly leaned over to read it even though he knew nothing about baking.

He shrugged. “Give him a ring. Tell him he’s left out an ingredient.”

“And he told me where to find Irish butter so I wouldn’t need it!”

“Irish butter? What’s the difference between that and what we get here?”

“I’m not sure. Small batches or wooden paddles or something?”

“Oh, like in butter churns?”

Morse shrugged. “I suppose.”

Box swore. “Prawn crisps! Who the hell is putting prawn crisps in the machine? I keep selecting salt and vinegar, and it always drops a packet of prawn!” He wandered off to find someone to complain about prawn crisps to.

Bright entered and made a beeline for the tea machine before joining Morse at his table. “What’s that you’ve got, Morse?”

“DeBryn gave me his seed cake recipe.”

“Mrs. Bright likes a good seed cake.”

Morse handed him the card. “This is an excellent one.”

Bright read the recipe. “Do you mind if I copy this? I do enjoy baking, and she’s not been herself lately.”

“Go ahead. Just let me know how much cream you put in.”

Bright squinted at the recipe. “There’s no cream in this.”

“It says _cream butter and sugar_ right there.”

“Oh, that’s not an ingredient. That’s using an electric mixer to whip the butter and sugar together.”

“It is?” Suddenly Morse remembered the scene in the kitchen at the Woodstock station, followed by waves of embarrassment and anger. “They lied to me!”

“Who?”

“Strange and Miss Thursday. I’d joked about baking a cake, and Strange remembered. Someone had left an old cookbook in the kitchen out at Woodstock, but the only ingredients I had on hand were eggs, sugar, and flour, so I made a pound cake. Only it said _cream butter and sugar_ , so I added cream, and it didn’t bake properly, and when Strange arrived he’d brought Miss Thursday with him, and there was my failed pound cake. They told me it only took a tablespoon or so of cream.”

“Perhaps they wished to spare your feelings,” Bright suggested gently.

“And then Strange said it didn’t need cream at all, with modern butter! Here I’ve been reading butter labels in the shops, trying to figure out which is modern butter and which isn’t!”

Bright had to work not to laugh. Morse reminded him of a stroppy, tired little lad determined to be angry about something.

*****

“You know, you can be a real prick sometimes.”

“Oh, nice language, Emily Dickinson!” Morse snapped, glaring down at Joan. Meanwhile Viv Wall had walked in, and was trying to collect a few files as unobtrusively as possible. She wasn’t entirely sure what they were arguing about, and wondered if it actually mattered. She didn’t miss this aspect of being young.

“And there you go again! I know you’re smart. We all know you’re smart, you don’t have to prove it all the time. Give it a rest.”

“Oh, yes, so smart! I’m sure you and Strange had a great laugh at my expense, telling me how much cream to put in a pound cake!”

“Pound cake doesn’t take cream,” Viv Wall couldn’t help interjecting.

“I know that _now!_ And I know there’s no such thing as modern butter, either, no thanks to you! I’m sure you thought it was very funny! _Let’s make a fool of Morse, it’ll be such a laugh!_ ”

Joan suddenly realized what he was talking about. “We weren’t having a laugh! We were trying to spare your feelings! You’d worked so hard baking that ruddy cake!”

“You should have told me!”

“You’d just tried to bake a cake in a cooking pot!”

“It was all I had! It was a metal pan! What’s the bloody difference? Just—just—thank you for your help, then and now!” Morse snapped sarcastically, before leaving in a huff.

“Boyfriend?” Viv asked.

Joan shook her head. “He’s another one of Dad’s.”

 _That doesn’t answer my question_ , Viv thought. She really didn’t miss this aspect of being young. She was going to pick up half a cake on the way home tonight to share with Edgar—she wasn’t much for baking either— and celebrate being middle-aged and settled. “Wait—what on god’s green is modern butter?”

“I don’t know.”

“Perhaps you should sign him up for cooking lessons.”

*****

Nobody seemed to use the station house kitchen for anything more than making tea or toast, or washing a few dishes. Morse waited until most of the other men were gone, either on shift, out on dates, or at the pub, then carried a file box full of supplies into the kitchen. He’d already stashed eggs and butter in the fridge, labeled _Morse_ in bold black ink.

He’d bought a cake pan and electric hand mixer, and remembered to butter the pan this time, then carefully measured out dry and wet ingredients. 

“What are you making?”

“Seed cake.” The electric mixer not only made combining the butter and sugar much easier, it also drowned out any attempts at conversation. Once the cake was safely in the oven he turned to the washing up, only to find a trio of police constables who looked all of about twelve years old regarding him hopefully.

“Could I lick one of the beaters? My mum always let my sister and me lick the beaters after she mixed a cake.”

“I want the other one.”

The third was already angling for the mixing bowl. Morse rolled his eyes. “Go ahead.”

The oven timer was broken so Morse decided to keep an eye on the clock. He was quickly driven from the common room by a football match on the telly, and retreated to his room with his book. Sprawled across the narrow bed, the warm summer afternoon soon made him nod off.

“Morse! Morse!” He jolted awake to his door being pounded on and voices shouting his name.

“I haven’t even got my music on!”

“Your cake!”

A quick glance at the bedside clock and he sprang out of bed, wrenched open the door, and nearly knocked over the constables in his dash to the kitchen. One of them had rescued the cake, or tried to, but it was a lost cause. He’d slept twenty minutes past when it was time to take it out of the oven, and it was blackened. “ _Shit!_ ”

The one who’d taken it out of the oven carefully flipped the pan over one of the mismatched plates that had accrued in the kitchen over the years. The cake landed with a small thud. “It might be okay underneath.”

It wasn’t. Morse closed his eyes for a long moment. “I need to get out of here,” he muttered. Heading to the nearest pub, he promptly drowned his disappointment in a pint.

When he returned the common room was empty. His disaster of a cake still sat on the counter. But it looked different. A closer look revealed that the other men had apparently been cutting off the burned exterior to get at the center. He cut off a not-burned bit and tried it. It was overcooked, dry, and crumbly, an insult to Max’s recipe.

“I dunno who made it, mate. It’s not bad, if you cut off the burned bits,” a passing constable told him.

_I should take cooking lessons. Even my failures wouldn’t go to waste around here._

*****

  
His next attempt was to repeat the pound cake, and he added a cup of fresh blueberries. Mott, Carpenter, and Jones were at his elbow for the beaters and bowl again.

“It tastes lemony,” Carpenter observed.

“I put lemon zest in.”

“Sounds like washing-up liquid.”

This time Morse hovered by the oven, watching the clock like a hawk. When the time was up he poked a toothpick in the cake (Max had told him that trick), gave it five more minutes, then poked it again. The thin old dish towel let a little too much heat through and he nearly dropped it.

This time it came out of the pan almost perfectly. The aroma had drawn every man in the station house it seemed, all looking at him pleadingly. “You’re like a bloody plague of locusts. Fine.” He cut off half of the cake and stashed it safely in his room, leaving the rest for the others.

The next day Strange found a slice of pound cake, neatly wrapped in waxed paper, sitting on his desk with a note that simply said, _from Morse._

It was actually quite good.

“Your boyfriend dropped off something for you. It’s on your desk, and it smells like cake,” Viv told Joan when she returned from a house check.

Joan read the folded note atop the waxed-paper-covered rectangle first: _I’m sorry I was ~~rude~~ a prick last time we talked—Morse._ “He’s not my boyfriend.” He’d brought her a thick slice of pound cake with blueberries baked in. “Oh. Oh, my god. This is delicious. Viv, you have to try this.” She broke the piece in half.

Viv Wall savored her share. “He’s a quick study.”

“Apparently so.”

“Snap him up, Joan. Men who can cook are rare birds.”

“Just because he can bake a pound cake, doesn’t mean he can cook.”

“It means he can learn.”

“And he’s not my boyfriend.”


End file.
